Women, feminism, and geek culture

BGG (Black Girl Gamer)–LFG, PST!

Cori Roberts is founder of Gameinatrix.com and remaining founding member of Gamer Girls Radio, and has been involved in gaming media for over 8 years. She’s currently obsessed with the MMO Fallen Earth and anything involving vampires in the world of Second Life.

African American (black) woman from the recent Call of Duty commercial. One of the very few times a black woman has been used in the marketing of any game.

While several gamers are fighting for the right to game with all the controversy surrounding the community as of late, there are a few of us women gamers waging another kind of war in our own respective communities. It’s not just the standard girl gamer war, where there is incessant name calling, references to genitalia or even the normal male chauvinist crap. The battle is having to defend why we are even playing games, in the first place. Why would “we” be playing games, because black women don’t play games.

I’m one of these elusive, mythical, Black (African American for you new kiddies) women gamers who purportedly do not exist. While this particular battle is not a boss battle for me, it is an annoying and repetitive battle. It’s one I have to wage most every time I encounter a new “sistah” who can barely operate her iPhone, but thinks she is somehow more versed in games and who should be playing them, than I am. The first thing I’m asked is how I ended up even playing games, like it’s a disease I somehow contracted. Then I’m told how “different” and “odd” I am. My mother bought me my first console at age six and I never knew I was any different from other little girl. Never knew I was a geek, a nerd, or any other derivative until I was much older. However, after I realized I was one of these beings, referred to as a geek, I kept it secret and tried hard to suppress it. I can tell you I use to rent games at Block Buster and often lied about who they were for. Once out on my own, gaming became part my regular daily routine. Get up, school, work, come home, game. When I couldn’t afford to go clubbing, you’d find me on the floor of my furniture-less apartment, head propped up with pillows, faithful dog at my side, playing games. The only thing I bought other than games was clothes. Come on, I’m still a girl! It should suffice to say, I obviously don’t fit the mold of fat white guy, with glasses. I was a thin shapely black chick with glasses (used to wear glasses anyway), who spent her free time perusing not only Cosmo magazine, but strategy guides in now defunct Electronics Boutique. The guys began to love when I came into EB every Friday, because other guys followed me in and they stayed to chat when they realized I actually loved games just as much as they did. Me, wearing my designer perfume and clothes, could take a guy down in Tekken in 30 seconds flat. After getting over the shock of being beaten by me, I always had a new friend and finally there in EB I stopped feeling odd and out of place. I fit in somewhere. However the older I got, the more dissonance I noticed with other black women once I mentioned video games or anything geeky for that matter. All of those silent lunches finally lead to me speaking up and a mini-battle royale about the Lifetime Network and gaming where I schooled my “sistah” on the world of gaming and technology. I also shared with her that technology is an area where black women were being left in the dust. Most of us are still taught and truly believe as black women, it’s just our not our place to be “smart”. Before the eye rolling begins, this is not true of all women of color, but it’s true enough. So true that I still have yet to pick up an Essence, Ebony, or Jet magazine and see an entire tech section (not to pick on Essence, this is true of a lot of women’s magazines). Hip Hop mags like XXL do share some tech info with its readers, but tend to have more male readers than females. It’s also still true that most black women tend to steer clear of the whole technology thing and can barely use an iPhone, let alone know which cables go where on their Xbox. While we’re excelling in other areas, still some black women view the gaming industry as a childish and MALE one. As a result, our presence in the world of tech and gaming is lagging far behind the rest of the world.

As a Black woman (I prefer being called Black to African American, I didn’t move here from Africa and become American, I was born here), I find it disheartening that even so many of our notable Black public figures and role models don’t even acknowledge the gaming culture unless it’s the latest fad. For instance Oprah Winfrey has had a show or two about gaming addiction and how horrid gaming is, only to give away the Kinect on her show later. As a gamer I was not impressed or fooled. I once heard Tyra Banks say on her show something akin to she thought men were so childish playing games, and she hated when her man did it. Women don’t wanna play games, chile! These women are considered great role models and several young women look up to them. I wonder if they know the message they are sending to young black women. Yes you’re teaching them that beauty is subjective, but are teaching them that technology is for those other folk. This, in my opinion, will lead to a nation of beautiful black women who are technologically incompetent. They will know the best way to maintain their weave but not how to change out a faulty hard drive. Or even how to do something as simple as defrag a hard drive.

Take note, most of the women you’ll see fighting for a place in the gaming industry usually are not of ethnicity. I explained to my friend the facts and figures of the gaming industry, and how our lives as black women should not be all about being a nurse (this is a common thing in the black community, pushing daughters to be nurses or get into law, go after the money), but instead embracing a new culture, a culture that does in fact make a LOT of money, a culture that, though considered controversial at times, is indeed the future. A culture where most times, our differences are celebrated, not hated. Ok, perhaps I’m pushing the Utopia envelope here, but aside from a very few assholes, I’ve NEVER been called out for the color of my skin. Admittedly, I hail from several racial backgrounds, but I identify as being your average garden variety, Diva, black, woman. I pointed out to her that I’ve never been told I wasn’t dressed appropriately to game. That my manicure to was too old to game. That I wasn’t black enough to game. The only thing that has ever held me back is not having the SAME game as a gamer buddy.

Said friend turned her head to look out the window and quietly said to me, “I just don’t get it…you gamers…” But she did call a few months later sounding bubbly and told me she’d bought her first console. Yes it was a Wii, but she was planning on getting an Xbox, as well. She’d seen some “interesting’ things at Game Stop that she actually wanted to play. But I dare say if I hadn’t opened my mouth, if I hadn’t in essence said that gaming as entertainment is okay, she would never have played. Though I’ve managed to bring some of my friends to the dark side, I still have to deal with strangers form assumptions based on the fact that I’m a gamer. If I’m in Best Buy or any store’s PC section, I still get the tech behind the desk who feels the need to try to explain to me every detail of my video card and how it works, where to install it on my motherboard. I hate the condescension in their voice and this is after I’ve told them a million and one times that I’m a gamer. I have every console, (except the 3DS, but give me time) and even a gaming PC, that I built myself, from scratch, even after I tell them I run a gaming website and podcast and have for 8 years. They don’t hear me until I get a little belligerent and then they are shocked and awed. The next thing is to test me, because it’s just impossible to them that black woman as a gamer exists. I am always told that of course I must not be hard core, no woman is. I can tell you that I am indeed as hardcore as they come. And just because I may wear a weave, wig, extensions or like shoes, doesn’t detract from that. I’d like to tell my fellow “sistahs” that yes, you can be fabulous, and play games, and know how your iPhone works. I do not find it cute or charming when you have a beautiful piece of technology and you use it more as a status symbol and can’t even figure out how to make a simple call. You can be smart, and know how to fix your own PC, iPhone, or hook up your own HDTV and then feel extra proud to sit down and watch your Sex in the City re-runs, without having to call your man over to do it for you. I am hoping one day to be in the store and not have to tell another black woman to buy games for her daughter, not just her son, and not hear the mother say she won’t like it, when clearly the little girl is interested. I’d like to see more black women put their daughters in front of a computer and push them to learn more math, science and physics. But sadly I see this particular battle as a very long one. While I am graced to have a few black women who do share my passion for gaming, my white girlfriends (whom I love just as much) far outnumber the black ones. I do wish I had more black gaming girlfriends (and in the same city would be nice) so this black girl can stop constantly LFG.

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7 thoughts on “BGG (Black Girl Gamer)–LFG, PST!”

Black, white, yellow or red, boy or girl, games are fun aren’t they? What isn’t fun is all the sexism pervading so many aspects of everyday life. And yet there is progress, but oh so slow: in Coco Chanel’s time, a woman couldn’t wear trousers, but only a skirt or a dress (hence the invention of the /costume tailleur/). In 1888 in my country, a woman having completed law studies was refused admittance to the bar, because Â«the law pofession was too dignified for a womanÂ» (thus spake the court, after she appealed the decision of the staffholder: see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Popelin ). Not to mention, of course, the evolution of the voting code. But I digress. Â«Women don’t wanna play games, chile!Â» To h*** withthat kind of appearances. It’s fun, she likes it, it hurts no-one, let her play!

Thanks Tony! I love your references throughout the years. Coco is one of my idols as is Anna Wintour (fashion is one of my other loves) as they represent strong women who didn’t give up because someone told them they couldn’t.

Amazing, I agree with so much of your perspective … and while I am a white girl … there is much I can relate to and at the very least empathize with. My gamer friends and I talk all the time about how we don’t “advertise” our hobby, we feel the need to hide it for some reason. On the flip side … many men that are into gaming are attracted to women that actually share a hobby with them and aren’t going to berate them for staying up to finish a raid in WoW or because they’re on a winning streak in COD … so I feel like we’re constantly playing both sides of a coin … one where we feel like we should not let the world know we exist … and the other advertising to the world that we do exist … I can’t tell you how many people have been completely jaw-dropped surprised to hear that I play COD and Halo and whatever else I can come up with to pass the time …. and then they’re even more surprised to find out I play PC games; WoW, Guild Wars, Rift … like I’m some kind of strange creature … I am lucky enough to be surrounded by other females in my WoW world, my guild has probably a 60:40 male to female ratio … but at the same time … outside the game … I have to deal with people who as you said “can barely operate her iPhone, but thinks she is somehow more versed in games and who should be playing them, than I am.” … I feel for you having to add another stigma on top of the gamer girl stigma as it is … and commend you for the way you write and speak about it!

I am so thrilled to see this! I’ve often been the only girl plus the only black person in my gaming and geek circles. My gamer friends didn’t care but I found myself explaining my interests to my “friends” in the black community that I grew up in (US South, my family was deeply involved in our church, etc). At some point, I decided that I didn’t need to explain anything. I would just be who I am: a black woman gamer geek computer nerd science fiction fan.

I’m so tickled to see more of us at conventions. I do wonder sometimes how many I’ve run into in online games (this not being a normal topic of conversation during in-game chats). I’m primarily a PC gamer but I do have a Wii. I adore FPS as well as MMOs. Totally still addicted to World of Warcraft. Oh, I have done some in game smack downs of ignorant talk in WoW.

I’m also with you on the preferring Black to African American; for the same reasons!

From one BGG to another, thank you soooo much for this! I think that with us BGGs is that in addition to all of the sexist garbage out there about women who play video games, we have to go so far as to insist that *we exist*.